The Children's Corner

Chapter 15

"My, what a scene she made, and what a din! And how this man Tartuffe has taken her in!"

"What are you doing?" Dana asks as Alexis emotes to a pillow perched on her desk.

"I'm practicing the role of Cleante in Moliere's Tartuffe. I know the lines from running them with Gram when she played Dorine in an off-Broadway revival. The review in the Ledger said she would have gotten a Tony if she'd done it on Broadway."

"But you told me that you decided in high school that acting wasn't for you."

Alexis sighs, nodding her head. "It isn't. But I just found out I'm short an elective credit to graduate."

Dana's jaw drops. "How can you be? You have all those credits from your fencing and yoga classes."

"Except that the school decided to put a lid on the number of credits it will count for studying the same thing. This close to graduation, I had to come up with something fast. Kathy Burkwell in 217 was playing Cleante, and she just came down with mono. I volunteered to fill in. The professor directing the play is an old friend of Gram's, so she figured I had the genes to pull it off. This way, the show will go on, and I'll get the credit I need. Oh, but to earn it, I also have to be in some little presentation at the daycare center. Still, that's no big deal."

Dana rubs his palm against the stubble beginning to darken his chin. "You've been using every spare minute you have for studying for your criminalist interview. Won't you have to spend a lot of time in the theater?"

"I will," Alexis admits. "But Cleante's not that big a role. She's off stage for a lot of the play. So I'll bring my references with me to study. A lot of them are online anyway. I can read them on my phone. If I don't graduate, I could lose my place with Osnitz. I'll make it work."

Wrapping his arms around his wife. Dana tucks her head beneath his chin. "I know you will."

At a back table in the Anchor's bar, Esposito drops disgustedly into a chair across from Ryan. "This was a waste of time. All the crew members I talked to said the same thing. The containers, including the one with MacIver's fancy outfits, were sealed. Nobody did anything with them until they were unloaded at the dock. From there, they would have gone straight to the trucks hauling them. No one on the ship had a look inside any of them."

"Same story my guys told," Ryan replies. "But they admitted that the cargo wasn't guarded. They didn't have cameras on them either. The only cameras were on the bridge to preserve what happened in case the pilot screwed up and hit something. Anyone aboard could have slipped the drugs into the container and resealed it. No one would have known the difference. Or it could even have been done before the container was put on the ship. According to Jenny, most of MacIver's clothes were made in Kazahkstan. Maybe the drugs were stashed with the clothes there."

Esposito snorts. "So how do we find out what happened in Kazahkstan?"

"We don't have to. But if that's where the drugs came from, we're wasting our time worrying about what happened on the ship. All we need to know is who was waiting for them here. Haulers keep records of where their vehicles stop. They even track them on GPS so the drivers keep to their schedules. Whoever killed MacIver should be along that route – or connected to somewhere that is."

"That could be a lot of people, Bro."

"When we talk to the trucking company, we'll find out."

"Why the frowny face?" Rick asks as Kate stares at the screen of her laptop.

"Julia Crawford has a rap sheet. She was picked up for shoplifting when she was eighteen."

Looking over Kate's shoulder, Rick eyes the report. "According to this, she wasn't convicted. Which last I heard, in this country, makes her innocent."

"Except we both know that in practice, that isn't true. She could have tossed the merchandise, so the cops had no proof. And judges and juries have to give defendants the benefit of the doubt."

"As should we," Rick declares. "It could have been as simple as a case of mistaken identity. That happened to one of Alexis's friends once. She was wearing the same T-shirt as the perpetrator and had the same color hair. But the store's security video cleared her, as did six friends, including Alexis, who were having pizza with the accused when the crime took place. We could just ask Julia what happened."

"Yeah, but I want to do it face to face," Kate insists.

"My wife, the grillmaster. Fine. We can invite her to dinner. Very few students will turn down a free meal. And we'll have another chance to observe how she interacts with our precious offspring."

Trying to hold his tablet steady as his chopper pilot bucks a crosswind, Jack studies the output from the ground imaging radar. He was right about there being tunnels beneath the truck repair facility. But, unfortunately, that proves nothing. Tunnels run beneath most of that part of town. And many of them also have hotspots, part of the city's underground economy. So Jack's going to have to take a look down there.

Given the sprawling labyrinth, he'll have no difficulty finding an entry point. Any problems will arise with what and whom he meets on the way to his target. But he's had worse missions – much worse ones. When he's back on the ground, he'll visit his weapons locker to make preparations. And Azra might have a logistical idea or two. She usually does, and Jack's always found it worth listening to them.

Fidgeting in the hallway, Julia waits for the door to the Castle loft to open. She should have realized that as a cop, even one on leave, Kate Beckett could get access to arrest records. Not that it should make a difference. Julia did nothing wrong. But on TV, the cops always go after people who've been arrested before. Even if they were acquitted, the police suspect them anyway. Maybe Kate Beckett thinks the same way. Julia hopes not. Bambi told her that Lily's parents are fair. She hopes her cousin is right.

"Come on in," Richard Castle invites Cindy's nervous would-be replacement. "I'm just about to put the burgers on. Kate's just finishing feeding the twins, and Lily's working on a puzzle. Cindy's studying at the library. So anything you need to tell us stays in the family. Do you want cheese?"

"What? Oh, yes, please. But I really don't have much to say that I didn't already tell you."

Rick slides the burgers onto the stove's built-in grill. "Then it won't take long, and we can get down to enjoying our meal. I'm just starting to grill again. I had to get the fan changed to a super-quiet model so the noise wouldn't bother Jake. You'd never know it from the racket he makes himself, but he really hates many loud noises. We had to get a different vacuum cleaner too. I did some research. Sensitivity to sounds like that has to do with harmonics even more than decibel levels. I'm lining up an audio engineer to figure out how to keep Jake as comfortable as possible. There's nothing we can do about garbage trucks under our windows, but we can fix things in here. After you answer a few questions for Kate, maybe we can talk about that."